Thursday, May 24, 2012

Governments, with time and growing mass, become like living organisms, preoccupied with their own survival, growth and increased power over their surroundings. It is a function of Human Nature multiplied by a certain type of institutionalized, inculcated organizational psychology (the more highly organized and structured cousin of mob psychology).

You're right -- this post is a slight departure from the usual Global Futurist Blog agenda, but it should foreshadow some of the predictions I'm going to be sharing with you during these next few months.

Back to Governments: The more they eat, the bigger they become. The bigger they get, the more they must eat in order to maintain their gain. They become gluttonous, and if they do not meet with constant resistance from outside of themselves, they develop a sense of righteousness, entitlement and an insatiable appetite for all that they can consume. they become self-obsessed and stop existing to serve the people -- they begin to harvest and feed off of the people...

The people become servants of an ever-growing, ever-more-powerful government, which starts to look at them as a farmer looks at milk cows. These neoplastic juggernauts lose sight of their ethical purpose and become oppressive and intimidating.

When times are hard, they become desperate, and they go to greater, more aggressive measures to become satiated. Since they do not produce a measurable product or output, they take what they require or demand from the people's productivity, and offer less and less in exchange for these increased transgressions.

That should set the tone for the articles coming during these next few months...

Sunday, May 13, 2012

The US Citizenship pedigree is fast losing its appeal, both among U.S. citizen-taxpayers and among those citizens of other countries who once sought U.S. Citizenship as the route to a better future for themselves, their families. Our dilemma is a tough one -- education is becoming more expensive (while declining in quality, arguably), but domestic jobs and career paths upon graduation don't offer a great deal of promise or hope. The U.S. is a nation which is and will continue to experience a decline in the standard of living [except for the very wealthy minority] due to increased taxes, reduced income to service debt, increased costs for consumer items, ever-tightening credit and a lack of trust and faith in leadership and fundamental institutions.

As A Global Futurist, a writer for The Internationalist Page Blog and a contributor to The InfoSphere Business Alerts And Intelligence Blog I cannot deny what I perceive as a decline in the desirability of U.S. citizenship, and a decline in the United States' historically powerful influence on international affairs -- especially within the next two years. In the meantime, the brain drain continues as the exodus from U.S. Citizenship becomes an increasingly attractive alternative to remaining "cautiously optimistic" that America has turned the corner, and that a powerful, fundamental and continuous economic rebound is occurring, or is about to occur.

The article excerpt which follows appears courtesy of Reuters, one of the world's largest and most reputable news services. It bears goods new and bad news... after you've had an opportunity to review it, click back to this page and read the article which follows it, which talks about an even more recent hasty escape from US-citizenship plan by a fellow who is about to add some billions to his personal balance sheet. When you've finished that exciting story, please come back to read my Futurescape view:

Tax time pushes some Americans to take a hike

A year ago, in Action Comics, Superman declared plans to renounce his U.S. citizenship. Genette Eysselinck renounced her U.S. citizenship to become Belgian. (Credit: Reuters/Pascal Parrot)"'Truth, justice, and the American way' - it's not enough anymore," the comic book superhero said, after both the Iranian and American governments criticized him for joining a peaceful anti-government protest in Tehran.

Last year, almost 1,800 people followed Superman's lead, renouncing their U.S. citizenship or handing in their Green Cards. That's a record number since the Internal Revenue Service began publishing a list of those who renounced in 1998. It's also almost eight times more than the number of citizens who renounced in 2008, and more than the total for 2007, 2008 and 2009 combined.

But not everyone's motivations are as lofty as Superman's. Many say they parted ways with America for tax reasons.

The United States is one of the only countries to tax its citizens on income earned while they're living abroad. And just as Americans stateside must file tax returns each April - this year, the deadline is Tuesday - an estimated 6.3 million U.S. citizens living abroad brace for what they describe as an even tougher process of reporting their income and foreign accounts to the IRS. For them, the deadline is June.

The National Taxpayer Advocate's Office, part of the IRS, released a report in December that details the difficulties of filing taxes from overseas. It cites heavy paperwork, a lack of online filing options and a dearth of local and foreign-language resources.

For those wishing to legally escape the filing requirements, the only way is to formally renounce their U.S. citizenship. [read the entire article]
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And now, for your consideration this article excerpt, courtesy of Yahoo! News which talks about an exciting and expedient exodus from the ever-rapacious Uncle Sam by a young fellow who is about to make a great deal of money and does not wish to award to the U.S. Government for its discretionary use (bailouts, handouts, stimulus schemes, governmental expansion, the war effort, and 'miscellaneous items'):

Eduardo Saverin, the billionaire co- founder of Facebook Inc. (FB), renounced his U.S. citizenship before an initial public offering that values the social network at as much as $96 billion, a move that may reduce his tax bill.

Facebook plans to raise as much as $11.8 billion through the IPO, the biggest in history for an Internet company. Saverin’s stake is about 4 percent, according to the website Who Owns Facebook. At the high end of the IPO valuation, that would be worth about $3.84 billion. His holdings aren’t listed in Facebook’s regulatory filings.

Saverin, 30, joins a growing number of people giving up U.S. citizenship, a move that can trim their tax liabilities in that country. The Brazilian-born resident of Singapore is one of several people who helped Mark Zuckerberg start Facebook in a Harvard University dorm and stand to reap billions of dollars after the world’s largest social network holds its IPO. [read entire article].
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Fast Forward Futurescape:

With jobs, wealth, consumer markets, opportunities for advancement, home ownership and many other critical components of the "American Dream" being exported aggressively from the United States, combined with the erosion of Constitutionally-protected liberties and civil rights and an ever-more desperate Treasury and Internal Revenue Service increasingly taxing a shrinking tax base, U.S. citizenship is not as highly-valued as it once was.

In fact, if there were an exchange for the open trading of various international citizenships, many a participant would be selling the U.S, Passport short in the current economy.

Expect this trend away from the once-coveted U.S.A. pedigree to continue for at least another 8 - 10 years. In the interim, expect real domestic employment, the purchasing power of the USD, and the pool of intellectual, managerial and professional talent to continue to decline, while slavery to consumer indebtedness, real percentage of all income paid to the government (federal, state and local), criminal and civil prosecutions (and draconian sentencing) for an increasing menu of criminalized activities, the cost of living and other important economic and sociological determinants to continue to rise.

Say what you wish. This little slice of an article excerpt which appears (months after initial publication) courtesy of BigThink illustrates the latest publicly-acknowledged and civilian-demonstrated/witnessed piece of viable stealth technology which I have seen in some time.

Since its publication, I have been watching the media and citing trends for validation and direction, and have found an overwhelming preponderance of both. Please review and then click on the BACK button...

Researchers have 'cloaked' a three-dimensional object for the first time, making it invisible from all angles. Using a shell made of plasmonic materials, an 18cm long cylinder appeared to disappear beneath incoming light from the microwave region of the electromagnetic spectrum. The materials "present a 'photo negative' of the object being cloaked, effectively cancelling it out." Previous efforts have focused on a 'carpet cloak', in which the object is overlaid with a 'carpet' of metamaterial that bends light so as to make the object invisible.

What's the Big Idea?

Because plasmonic materials act like a photo negative, a distinct cloak must be prepared for each object. While the technology does not currently operate at the visible spectrum, researchers think it could be use to improve scanning microscopes—the best microscopes science has to offer—"to yield an improved view of even smaller wavelengths of light." A Harry Potter-style cloak still remains a ways off but researchers say the plasmonic technique is their bet for the most applicable cloak.

Welcome back. Allow me to hypothesize (the coward's word for predict), that this technology will be refined, adapted and applied to special combat uniforms, camera and observation devices (civilian and military), drones and robotics and other uses where it is advantageous to see without being seen. Entire nuclear reactors could be rendered invisible to multiple forms of detection with a combination of these cloaking technologies, too.

On a brighter note, there are rumors and murmurings that variations on this invisibility technology might be used to protect buildings from the ravages of earthquakes. This would be wonderful -- however, a bit of behavioral science combined with economics and the lessons of history would lead me to believe that the applications set forth in the preceding paragraph will receive priority.